


On The Hook

by FictionPenned



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Other, canon-typical catfishing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-05
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-18 19:07:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29862693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FictionPenned/pseuds/FictionPenned
Summary: As far as Yaz can tell at first glance, there are no passcodes for buildings or high-level government secrets on the phone. Just row after row of conversations with people. Some of these bear names and labels that Yaz recognizes — Jane Austen and Elvis Presley and Virginia Woolf (Bowling) — but some are marked with names that she's quite certain she's never heard before. Mostly, however, the phone is dominated by exchanges with O. The messages stretch back for years, and after a while, she gives up on trying to scroll up to the top of the conversation to figure out when this relationship started.From the messages, it’s abundantly clear that the Doctor has known O much, much longer than she’s known any of them.“Blimey, they’re chatty, aren’t they?” Graham comments as he peers over Yaz’s shoulder.“We already knew that,” Ryan says quickly before he leans forward and adds, “You should message him, Yaz.”Concerned about the Doctor's newfound penchant for texting and the intense secrecy surrounding it, the fam takes it upon themselves to investigate the identity of her texting buddy.
Relationships: The Doctor/The Master (Doctor Who), Thirteenth Doctor & Yasmin Khan & Graham O'Brien & Ryan Sinclair, Thirteenth Doctor/The Master (Dhawan)
Comments: 9
Kudos: 46





	On The Hook

The Doctor has been _texting_.

Not an overwhelming amount, all things considered — she still spends most of her time fiddling with the TARDIS and dragging everyone else into trouble — but it’s been happening often enough that the change has been noticeable. Graham once catches her giggling over a video in the middle of the night, and when he was asks what it is, she scrunches up her nose and shoves the phone into a pocket and claims that it’s nothing. Yaz glimpses her snapping a quick photo of her reflection in the TARDIS with an expression that _almost_ manages to look seductive. Ryan, perhaps, experiences the worst of it when he hears her drawl out a “ _hi_ ” in a nervous, flustered tone that he never expected to hear coming out of the Doctor’s mouth. The encounter immediately sends him running to compare notes the others in the vague hope of figuring out what might be going on.

It’s got to be aliens, right? Everything involving the Doctor turns out to be aliens in the end.

One day when it becomes too much to bare, the trio meets in the back of one of the many, many karaoke buses in the TARDIS to discuss this newfound texting phenomenon, mostly because it seemed like the place where the Doctor is least likely to barge in on them unexpectedly.

“I don’t get it,” Yaz says with a sigh. “I mean, it’s not like she ever texts _us_.”

“You, maybe,” Ryan drapes his arm over the back of one of the seats, shifting around as he tries to get comfortable. “She saved my number when she replaced my phone. Sent me 27 texts in a row asking me to explain a meme.”

“Did you?” Graham raises his eyebrows, resting his elbows on his knees as he leans forward interestedly.

“No, I didn’t. Don’t answer anyone who texts me 27 times in a row. That’s properly rude behavior, isn’t it?”

Yaz squints slightly, staring at one of the tinted windows as she tries to put the pieces together. “What meme was it?”

Ryan shrugs, raising a hand to scratch the back of his head. “Don’t remember.”

“Can you look?”

It takes Ryan a while to find the conversation, but when he does, he purses his lips. “The, uh, the one with the distracted boyfriend.”

That catches Yaz’s interest — and, perhaps, snags on a bit of jealousy, too. She rises from her own seat, leaning over Ryan’s shoulder in order to get a better look at it. “What’s the text say?”

“Can you tell me what this means? I don’t get it. Hello? You there? Ryan, I know I have the right number. C’mon Ryan this is time sensitive. If you don’t know, you can tell me. Ugh, fine. I’m coming over.”

Impatience prickles beneath Yaz’s skin. “Not _her_ texts, Ryan. The text on the meme.”

“Oh.” Ryan raises his phone up a bit higher, zooming in as he says, “Uh, the guy is just labelled with an O, the girl he’s looking at says “Aliens,” and the upset girlfriend is “My Desk Job.” There’s pause as three minds attempt to parse the seemingly unparsable. “Don’t think I could’ve explained it to her if I wanted to, if I’m honest.”

“Hold up,” Graham interjects, raising a hand to pause the others. “What if O is the person that she’s texting?”

Yaz scoffs. “Stupid name, O.”

“Maybe it’s a codename. Or an initial. Or like, a weird screen name thing,” Ryan supplies helpfully, getting more and more confident as he turns the idea over. “It’s not like the Doctor is a normal sounding name, either.”

Graham’s hand falls. “Yeah, but the Doc’s the Doc.”

Yaz shakes her head to clear it. “Has anyone asked her? Like, really confronted her about it?”

The boys blink in tandem.

A sigh rolls off her lips as she straightens her shoulders “Fine, then. I’ll do it, but I fully expect the both of you to back me up.”

No one argues.

***

It’s a couple hours before they manage to corner the Doctor. She’s holed up in one of the kitchens, goggles perched on top of her untidy hair, a spot of engine grease on her cheek, and a thoroughly disemboweled microwave haphazardly balanced in her lap.

Her gaze darts up when she hears footsteps, smile lines tightening the corners of her eyes. “Hi, fam!” Her voice is as bright as it always is whenever she sees them, though they all know that that brightness has a tendency to wear away throughout the course of a conversation, leaving behind a coat of anger and sadness that exists decidedly at odds with her usual presentation.

Yaz glances back over her shoulder to make sure that Graham and Ryan are still there, before stepping forward, pulling out the chair opposite the Doctor, and sinking into it. “Can we talk?”

“Always.” There’s an openness in the Doctor’s voice, but a door deep within her eyes slams shut.

Ryan coughs, Graham shoots him a look, and Yaz takes a moment to breathe, turning her eyes towards the microwave as she tries to find the words that she practiced in her head. “We’ve noticed —“ she starts before pausing to inhale again — “That you’ve been behaving a bit weird lately.”

The Doctor wrinkles her nose. “Me? Weird? _Never_.”

Ryan coughs again, and it’s quickly followed up by a sharp “ _Ow_ ,” as Graham kicks the side of his foot in response.

Yaz tries to ignore the scuffle. The fingers of her hand curl nervously, and she rests it against the edge of the table to steady herself. There’s something about confronting the Doctor — even about something as silly as texting — that makes her nervous. She feels like she’s out of her depth, like she’s butting up against eternity and demanding that it listen to her. “You’ve been texting a lot lately.”

“No, I haven’t.” The rebuttal is too quick to be entirely convincing, and the Doctor doubles back on it a moment later. “Maybe I have. I’m allowed to have friends aside from you lot, aren’t I?”

“I think it’s a little more than friendly, Doc,” Graham says, unable to stop himself from interjecting, and it’s Ryan’s turn to step on his foot.

“We’d like to know who it is,” Yaz says, trying to project a confidence that she does not feel. “Not because we’re monitoring you or anything, but it feels like we ought to be open about this kind of thing. Y’know, in case something goes wrong?”

The Doctor narrows her eyes and tightens her grip on the microwave. “It’s just a friend. It’s fine. Nothing to worry about.”

Yaz frowns and stands, shoving her hands into the pocket of her jacket. “Well, we’re here if you ever decide that you want to be open with us.”

She’s out of the room without another look, but Ryan lingers, turning over a temptation on the tip of his tongue. It is only once both Yaz and Graham have left the room that he finds the courage to ask it. “The person you’re texting, are they called O?”

The Doctor’s head snaps up.

It’s a good enough answer for Ryan, and he nods before marking his own exit, following along in the others’ wake.

***

The Doctor starts to get more careful. Her phone’s rarely out in company, but Yaz starts to learn the differences in mood that delineate between the days that the Doctor’s been texting and the days that she hasn’t. For a while, she starts to think that she sacrificed her one chance to learn the truth, but after a long day spent in the clutches of a space squid, Ryan walks into Yaz’s bedroom with the Doctor’s phone in hand, holding it aloft like a victory trophy.

“Got it,” he declares before tossing the phone onto the wrinkled bedspread. “I’m going to grab Graham, and then we can finally break into this bad boy.”

“Do you know her passcode?” Yaz asks, glancing first at the phone and then back up at Ryan, expression toeing the line between awe and worry.

“It doesn’t have one. I checked.”

Yaz shakes her head, a gesture rooted partially in disbelief and partially in disappoint. Given the depth to which they need to trust the Doctor on these shared adventures, it’s not particularly reassuring to know that their guide and pilot is careless enough to leave her phone unlocked. Who knows what kind of damage the Doctor’s mobile phone could do in the wrong hands. Surely it’s got loads of important information about the future of the universe in it — numbers for important people, passcodes for buildings, high-level government secrets, texts with mysterious shadowy figures — and if someone with bad intentions got ahold of it, they could probably dismantle entire empires.

The thought sends a touch of guilt worming towards the from of Yaz’s mind, but she shoves it aside. They’re not doing anything malicious with the phone, just…looking out for the Doctor’s best interests and making sure that O is actually a friend and not an enemy in disguise.

It’s a terribly long time before Ryan finally reenters the room with Graham in tow, and Yaz spends the entirety of the wait with an itch beneath her skin and her hands tightly clasped in her lap, resisting the urge to look early.

“We really going to do this?” Graham asks, looking between Yaz and Ryan as he takes a seat on the edge of Yaz’s bed.

There’s a breath and a pause, and Ryan and Yaz answer at the same time.

“Yeah.”

***  
  
As far as Yaz can tell at first glance, there are no passcodes for buildings or high-level government secrets on the phone. Just row after row of conversations with people. Some of these bear names and labels that Yaz recognizes — Jane Austen and Elvis Presley and Virginia Woolf (Bowling) — but some are marked with names that she's quite certain she's never heard before. Mostly, however, the phone is dominated by exchanges with someone called _O_. The messages stretch back for years, and after a while, she gives up on trying to scroll up to the top of the conversation to figure out when this relationship started.

From the messages, it’s abundantly clear that the Doctor has known O much, _much_ longer than she’s known any of them.

“Blimey, they’re chatty, aren’t they?” Graham comments as he peers over Yaz’s shoulder.

“We already knew that,” Ryan says quickly before he leans forward and adds, “You should message him, Yaz.”

“What?” Yaz’s heart jumps into her mouth, and she can feel her palms start to sweat. “No. What would we even say?”

“I dunno. Ask him if he is who he says he is,” Ryan shrugs.

“Ask him to send a picture,” Graham supplies helpfully.

Yaz’s brow wrinkles. It’s one thing to knowingly invade the Doctor’s privacy to check out the validity of a flirtationship, but it’s quite another thing altogether to get caught doing it. The Doctor will never forgive them if she found out. “But he’ll know it’s not the Doctor.”

“Not if you just ask for the photo. They send photos all the time, I mean, look at it,” Graham points at the blur of images moving up the screen. “At least we’ll know what the guy looks like. That’s a start.”

Yaz bites the inside of her cheek as her thumbs sketch out the dreaded question. “Bored. What are you up to? Send pics!”

It’s a bit of a wait, but eventually, O obliges.

“He can’t actually look like that,” Ryan says with a derisive sniff. “Too good looking. Does he even know that she eats _dirt_?”

“Maybe he’s catfishing her, like that one show,” Graham says. “What do they do there? They reverse search the number, right? See where it’s registered.”

“I’ll do it.” Ryan pulls out his own phone. “Have one of those subscriptions already from dealing with a situation at work. Read the number out, Yaz.”

Yaz obliges, and the ten seconds that the site takes to load the results feels like a century wasted on an agonizing wait.

“Says it’s not found,” Ryan says, disappointment evident.

Yaz breathes out a disappointed sigh, but an idea hits her a moment later. “Do you think the TARDIS can help us?”

A scoff hits the back of Graham’s throat. “I don’t think the TARDIS is one to snitch on the Doc.”

“Right,” Ryan nods. “Not to us, anyway. We’re still new and all. I mean, not _new_ new, but new enough.”

As if to confirm the point, the TARDIS hums beneath their feet, jostling the bed slightly.

It is uncanny how closely the ship monitors all the activities that take place within her too-small walls.

Silence falls over the trio as they bask in how foolish and ill-fated the endeavor now seems. For a moment, they wonder why they even did this in the first place, if all it’s going to do is make the Doctor angry.

Impulsively, Graham throws out once last effort.

“Ask him where he is, Yaz. Least that way we can get a hold on whether or not he has an evil lair or something. If he’s a monster and all that. Or if he dodges the question, we at least know that he’s a bit shifty, and that gives us more ammunition to confront her with, y’know? Don’t want her just asking if we’re jealous and all and not being able to back up the argument.”

Yaz’s thumbs type out the question and press send.

It is only a minute before the mysterious O provides an answer.

“Same old house in the same old desert. Shame that all the places where one might drop off the map are so _dire_.”

As they fam reads, heads bumping up against each other as they jostle for a good look, he adds a second reply. “Why? Are you dropping by? I’ll put the kettle on.”

It is disappointing.

They were so convinced that this guy might be up to no good, that he might be some secret enemy trying to lure the Doctor into a trap, but none of the monsters that they’ve met during their time with the Doctor behaved like this. None of them offered to put the kettle on. None of them talked like bored ex-pats.

It is with no small amount of resignation that they delete the evidence of their inference and sneakily return the phone to the Doctor’s pocket.

She hasn’t even realized that her friends stole it.

***

It is only weeks later, when a period of inactivity causes thoughts and doubts to nag at their minds and gnaw at their tongues that one of them breaches the subject again.

Ryan and the Doctor are alone. Graham and Yaz had affairs to tend to at home, and though it feels well to reference their ill-fated investigation without two-thirds of the team, he cannot seem to stop himself from thinking about it.

“Hey,” Ryan says from his place on the stairs in the console room, voice hesitant and gentle. “Your texting friend, O, can we meet him sometime?”

The Doctor looks up from the controls, face bathed in the warm light that emanates from every wall and every pillar. Her eyebrows are raised in a question, and a secret is etched across her mouth and knotted in the swell of her throat as she swallows.

After a moment of silence, she drops her eyes back to the console, blonde hair slipping across her face like an impenetrable curtain.

“Not now. Maybe sometime soon.”

It is the same answer she gives whenever anyone asks her about her past or her identity. It is an answer designed to be a strong no while still offering some kind of false hope to the asker.

Ryan’s fingers work at the skin of his palm as he, too, looks away.

“Yeah. Figured, really.”

There is a long pause, interrupted by only the hum of the engines and the awkwardness of the moment.

Eventually, Ryan breaks it, adding, “You know we’re here for you, right? No matter what happens. If you need to talk or cry or laugh, whatever.”

The Doctor looks up, curtain drawing back as her hair falls away from her face. There is still a wall behind her eyes, but there is a glimmer of fondness sitting in the shallow lines around her mouth.

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

It is the closest thing to a thank you that Ryan could possibly expect.

***

O is not forgotten, but he is not spoken of again until one day at MI6 HQ, when an assassination unfolds, the Doctor sends him kisses, and for better or for worse, the Doctor and the fam finally get to stop by that little house in the dire loneliness of desert.


End file.
